When it comes to graphic design, there's one student who has surpassed professors' expectations.
Edgar Carmona, 22, senior in graphic design minoring in business, won three awards in a row in Spring 2015 – something rare to come by.
He won the Juried Show Interactive Award for a video illustration project, the Studio Design Award, a performance-based award given for his work during the Spring 2014 semester, where he was working on two applications, and he was short-listed in the top 20 out of 200 submissions in the Typomania typography video festival in Russia.
Coming to Auburn for its prestigious design program, Carmona said the department helped him pay to enter the University and College Designers Association Conference, but the results won't be announced until Nov. 2015. If Carmona receives this award, his said his project will become part of the conference's collection permanently.
The Graphic Design USA magazine ranked Auburn University's School of Industrial and Graphic Design third in the nation in 2015, and, according to Robert Finkel, assistant professor of graphic design, Auburn is only one of two states that offers a bachelor of fine arts degree in graphic design.
Finkel said he had Carmona in three studio courses.
"I think Eddie has a strong sense of entrepreneurship," Finkel said. "I think he's going to really be able to combine the fine art graphic design kind of skills with this kind of business acumen, and, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if in a very short amount of time he's working on his own with a very successful business."
Courtney Windham, assistant professor of graphic design, said she encouraged Carmona to submit his final project he completed in her Type in Motion class last spring.
"He was a great example of just a student, you know, who has a lot of professionalism, very responsible, very great ideas, you know, just bringing an idea from the beginning to the end and kind of making it turn out to be a phenomenal project in the end, especially his final project, I mean it kind of blew us all away, it was pretty awesome," Windham said.
According to Windham, the project was called From Print to Motion, and they had to pick an event to promote through print and video.
"He did that really well, combining the two mediums together," Windham said.
He chose to promote the RallyCross X Games in Las Vegas sponsored by Red Bull and GoPro.
"I feel like their design language is kind of crude and not that great, so I saw it as a good opportunity to kind of come in and be like, you know, even as an action sport, there's still you know, room for some sort of a design language that kind of elevates the sport and makes it more visually appealing in terms of commercials and trying to capture an audience," Carmona said.
He complied a 1:10 television commercial highlighting some of the drivers who are competing.
Carmona said the X Games put GoPros on racing cars and they always break, so his concept in making the commercial was to glitch the typography and make it look like it came from broken GoPro footage.
For the printed piece Carmona made a poster and through an augmented reality application on a phone, the viewer can use the phone camera to look at the poster. The application scans the poster and turns the poster into a video on your device, transitioning a print piece into an interactive piece.
The application Carmona used was called Aurasma, a free application anyone can download.
Carmona said he constantly worked on this project for four and a half weeks.
He said he used 15 different videos he edited together from the X Games and he likes challenging himself.
"Everything I do is only as successful as my peers deem it to be," Carmona said. "So any criticism that anybody has is only going to strengthen it. And I see it as a great opportunity to just constantly self improve and do things that you otherwise wouldn't do."
According to Carmona, design is the art of communication and understanding what each element of design conveys to the viewer.
Carmona, originially from Las Vegas, has an older brother, 34, and sister, 32, who both attended Auburn.
He said he first leaned toward architecture and industrial design, because his sister graduated in industrial design.
"I was always left-brained, creative, doing stuff with music, so I knew it was going to be something in the creative field," Carmona said.
When he discovered web, app and interactive design, Carmona said he knew that's where he needed to be.
He started teaching himself how to use software better, code and create web templates, and said he realized when he got to class he was already one or two semesters ahead of other classmates.
"I kind of took a break from going out with friends, and like, you know the typical college life after freshman year, and I really wanted to kind of focus in on what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and, so I started doing research on web design, app design, interactive design, interactive advertising, and that's really when it kind of took off for me," Carmona said.
Industrial design focuses on products and the manufacturing of goods and graphic design focuses more on the introduction and appeal of the product or service to people.
Carmona said he focuses on user experience, which is what the user sees within the application, program or desktop software and the way they interact with it.
"So everything from the typography to the iconography, to the layout to how the menus work to ... basically my job is to facilitate the use of the product or the service through design language," Carmona said.
He also said industrial and graphic design overlap.
"It's very hard to find an industrial designer and not find a graphic designer and vice versa," Carmona said. "Not that they're interchangeable, but wherever you find one, you're always going to find another one."
Carmona said he sees himself moving back to Las Vegas for at least one year. He has three job offers in interactive advertising and exhibit design, a field his sister works in.
"Vegas is a hot spot for that, any time there's any convention of any sort or, like, some sort of expo, all the booths and stuff at trade shows have to get designed, there's a ton of money in that," Carmona said.
However, according to Carmona, he has multiple options. He said he may start his own business with his sister, Carmona LLC—a do it all custom design company.
Since his sister works in industrial design, he said they complete each other perfectly – what she doesn't know how to do, he does and vice versa.
If the business is successful he said he may stay there or obtain his master's degree in business at Harvard where he would have a full ride, since his brother is a professor there.
Carmona is a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity as their go-to designer.
He also said he is the chief design officer of a tech start-up including a website and application that Matt Stein, vice president of Delta Kappa Epsilon at Harvard, started. According to Carmona, the start-up is called Hive Technologies.
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